Elapsed Time Between Teaching and Evaluation: Does It Matter?

Background Web-based course evaluation systems offer the potential advantage of timely evaluations. The authors examined whether elapsed time between teaching and student evaluation of teaching impacts preclinical courses’ quality ratings. Method The overall relationship of elapsed time with evaluation rating was explored with regression and ANOVA. Time between teaching event and evaluation was categorized by weeks. Within-teaching-events means and variances in evaluations related to elapsed weeks were compared using repeated-measures ANOVA. Results With more elapsed weeks, quality mean ratings increased (P Conclusions Summaries of event quality are negligibly impacted by evaluation timing. Future studies should examine the impact of other Web-based evaluation features on evaluation.